


Quit Sending Me Love Songs

by fairgraves



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: But flirting in like in an adversarial type of way., Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-06-14 13:38:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15389925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairgraves/pseuds/fairgraves
Summary: There's a reason Jacob needs to have three trials. Sometimes the trials don't take right away.And then sometimes, rogue deputies send him messages like, “Quit sending me love songs over the radio, nerd.”





	1. Love Songs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1/19/19: I made a few small changes to this chapter and corrected some of the typos I found, otherwise this chapter remains unchanged since July 2018.

Maya had woken up at the bottom of Devil’s Drop, Jacob’s second trial under her belt, and if her companions were any indication, she was the only survivor. She laid in the mud for about twenty minutes staring at the bloated men, crying, because she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she had decimated them all. They didn’t look familiar, but then the dead bodies never did after the trials. It was hard to remember anyone when you ran through the course frantically shooting anyone who raised their rifle at you first.

“Fuck you, Jacob,” she cried, wiping her eyes with her dirty palms. She wasn’t proud of the Peggies she killed on a daily basis, but this was worse somehow. At least the Peggies had made their choice to fight her when she was destroying an outpost. Besides, she didn’t  _always_  kill them. Sometimes she just hit them hard with bats, and what do bats really do anyways?  

But with Jacob’s trials, there was never any sort of real choice. Kill or be killed. “Cull or be culled,” she laughed, bitterly.

What was she going to tell the suspicious Whitetails about this disaster? Tammy had been wary of her from the beginning, but with the second trial complete, would Eli finally follow Tammy’s lead and be rightfully suspicious of her? Hell, would he kick her out of the Whitetails? Maya shuddered at the thought of it. 

She sat up slowly, her head swimming and the sky spinning. Maya breathed in deep to calm the belated panic rising in her chest, her lungs filling with the faint smell of pine needles and the overpowering smell of the acrid rot of her companions. She exhaled sharply and stood.  

Jacob’s men had left her bag and sniper rifle propped up against a rock outcrop where she could see it and inside was her ammo, pistol, a couple “performance enhancers” courtesy of Tweak, her favorite sweatshirt, her grappling hook, and her radio. No food or water though, of course. She snatched the radio out and flipped through the channels. When she settled on Hurk’s channel – the one person who would ask her no questions in the Whitetail Mountains – she pushed the button to talk. “Hurk, you there?”

A few seconds passed and then the static cut out on his end and he replied. “Sure am, amigo! Been a while. Wanna hang?”

Maya grinned. Hearing the familiar twang of Hurk’s voice made her feel the tiniest bit better and quelled her anxiety. “Don’t suppose you’d want to pick me up at Hawkeye Tunnel?” 

“Can do, amigo,” and then somewhere in the background, Sharky yelled, “Po-Po, we’re on our way!”

She greeted Sharky too, and then ticked off her fingers. “Guys, bring Nancy, a lot of weapons –  _like a shit load_  – and some deodorant.” Maya’s stomach rumbled as a reminder. “Oh! And a pizza!”

 

* * *

 

 

Staci was starting to get used to the monotony of St. Francis’s schedule. Each day around two pm as the prisoners and their cages were getting hosed down to prevent the spread of disease, Jacob would watch from his second-floor office balcony and a receive a mid-day status report, without fail. Like a god on high, he would listen passively and then bark out orders, effectively dismissing the men and letting them scatter to do his bidding. Staci, just trying to stay in Jacob’s good graces, would putter around in the attached office, straightening papers and sweeping up the floor.

But for the last week or so, the tension had built to an uncomfortable level. Anyone could feel it as they hovered like satellites around Jacob; every order was short and clipped and every look was sharp and withering. Jacob’s normally cool, passive façade was starting to crack, and Staci’s anxiety, high already given his current predicament, was rapidly rising.

“Jacob, sir,” croaked one incredulous Peggie two days ago, “We received work that  _the sinner_  and those two idiots she hangs around with stole the Pack Hunter from Lansdowne and crashed it into the mountains north of the PIN-K0 Radar-Station.”  

Staci’s breath caught in his throat. The sinner could be only one person.

“Is she dead?” Jacob asked through gritted teeth.

“No, looks like it was deliberate. A couple of men saw them wing suiting through the mountains shortly after.”

“Leave,” was his only reply.

When Jacob received word today from a different Peggie that Maya had taken the Elk Jaw Lodge by force  _by herself_  Jacob fixed his glare on Staci from across the room. “Looks like our girl needs to be taught a lesson, Peaches.”

 _Our girl?_  Staci’s hands began to shake involuntarily and his blood ran cold at the mention of shared ownership of Maya. Jacob shuffled to his desk drawer and took out the music box, winding it slowly while his eyes scanned his surveillance screens for her. He found her on camera 13, hunched over a small fire cooking something Staci could not discern from this distance. She was close to the Elk Jaw Lodge still.  

Jacob picked up his radio and spoke into it, his voice gravelly and commanding. “Sector 13 – send a search party for the Deputy. Bring her back,” and then as a reminder, “Alive.”

When the music box could no longer be wound, Jacob turned the radio dial to Maya’s private channel. “Deputy,” he purred, deceptively soft, “I let you loose and this is how you repay me? You crash my plane? Take the Lodge? My hunters are coming for you. Be ready.”

Staci strained to see her reaction on the camera from halfway across the room and over Jacob’s shoulder, but there wasn’t much to see. Maya remained seated in her metal lawn chair with a wide grin stretched across her face. Her calm, lazy pose did nothing to steady Staci’s nerves.

Jacob opened the music box’s lid and that god forsaken music warbled out.

 

_… Only you can make all this world seem right  
Only you can make the darkness bright …_

 

Staci moved closer to the monitor, but careful to remain behind Jacob and out of reach. He was eager to watch Maya, willing her silently to run. Willing her to move. Willing her to do anything to just take this threat seriously.  _Go to Holland Valley, Maya_ , he repeated over and over and over in his mind.  _Jacob’s men won’t follow you to another region. Just go_.

She did not budge.

Instead something incredible happened. In all the weeks he spent as Jacob’s captured lackey, not once had he seen something so amazing; Maya, still caught on camera 13, raised her sniper rifle and took three shots off into the distance and out of sight of the camera’s view. She took a swig of her beer, stood, and shot twice more. She did not collapse to the ground, fly off into an uncontrollable rage, or get hit with a bliss arrow either.

When the song was finished, Jacob switched the channel and growled. “Sector 13, do you copy?” The knuckles on his hand clenching the radio went white.

No answer.

Staci began to back away towards the door. When he was a foot from the threshold, Jacob’s radio crackled to life, but instead of the search party, Maya’s disembodied, syrupy sweet voice greeted him. “Quit sending me love songs over the radio, nerd.”

Staci didn’t stick around long enough to hear Jacob’s reply. He was running through the halls of St. Francis, eager to distance himself from Jacob’s wrath, and find a safe space. He burst through the second-floor’s bathroom door and let out an anguished laugh – bubbling over into a twisted cry – just on the edge of crazy. He couldn’t believe it. For the first time in over a month he felt something like  _hope_.

Maya just might be strong enough to beat Jacob.


	2. Breaking and Entering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1/19/19: I made a few small changes to this chapter and corrected some of the typos I found, otherwise this chapter remains unchanged since August 2018.

Jacob didn’t respond to the Deputy’s taunt. Lord knows he had wanted to. But he bided his time, waiting for the right moment to bring her back to the Veteran’s Center. Instead he sat back, followed her on the cameras, and  _seethed_.

Oh, but how naïve he had been when he had listened to John rant and rave about the Deputy. “But you don’t  _understand_ , Jacob,” he had whined, over dinner one night, “She took my fucking ranch!  _Took it_!”

Jacob had only looked at his brother with a simpering smile and thought,  _I could take her_.

And when Joseph muttered absentmindedly over a forkful of mashed potatoes, “Let us not be derided by fools…” John took it upon himself to flip the table, ending the entire talk of the Deputy, and coincidentally, Joseph’s sage advice.

“Was that necessary, John?” Joseph had asked calmly, wiping his glasses free of mashed potato, as John stalked out of the dining room hollering.  

Jacob had thought his youngest brother’s outburst was extreme at the time, but now he recognized it for what it was: the culmination of a rage brought on by a woman who was crazy, who was hellbent on taking everything they had worked for.

Well, now Jacob was at his wit’s end with the Deputy too and that was simply  _inexcusable_. Every wolf beacon lost to a fiery explosion and every Whitetail rescued was fraying his patience and control.  

Promisingly though, he watched her leave on camera seven every night, headed towards Holland Valley. He sent a party out to find her. His instructions were clear: follow from a safe distance; do not engage in combat; report back on her location immediately, no matter the time of day.

When they responded with her exact coordinates, he grinned from ear to ear. He praised the men for their diligence and ordered them home, sans Deputy. Jacob wanted her lulled into a false sense of security. He wanted her pride to make her feel like she could get away with anything in the Whitetail Mountains.

Jacob waited one more night before he went after her. He obsessively followed her on the cameras during the day, hoping to glean something he could use against her later. He didn’t discover much, but he did like to watch her work even despite its adverse effects to his operation. She was good at what she did. Hell, if they’d been on the same side, she would have quickly become his favorite.

 _It’ll be a shame when I condition this rebelliousness clean out of her_ , he thought, crossing over into Holland Valley. 

It was one in the morning – a cloudy, starless night – but that suited Jacob just fine. He parked his truck about two miles down the road from her place and carefully made his way through the trees and thick undergrowth to her cabin. He should have spent longer surveying the area, but he felt like he was being pulled forward by the anticipation of finding her.

When he reached the little blue cabin, he stopped. It rested in a clearing among Ponderosa pines, suspiciously unguarded. Those two idiot cousins she hung around with were nowhere to be seen (he expected them to be sitting on the porch keeping lookout, but they definitely weren’t) and there were no traps laid out in the forest surrounding the place. There was nothing but a set of Christmas lights strung along the eaves of the house. He guessed the lights were for visibility of the perimeter, especially on a night like tonight, but with the Deputy it could have been as simple as she just liked the look of them twinkling in the dark.

Whatever her reasoning, she clearly was wholly unfazed by the possibilities of being snatched in Holland Valley.

Jacob watched the cabin for about fifteen minutes, looking for a sign that she was awake and waiting. The house lights remained off and he saw nothing move.  _Good enough_ , he thought. He approached the cabin cautiously with his gun unholstered by his side.  

Jacob hadn’t broken into a house since he was a teenager and he didn’t necessarily like the thought of breaking into a woman’s cabin either for a myriad of reasons (with the Deputy specifically, it was the uncertainty about what she had rigged up in this fucking cabin, for one damned thing), but hauling her away before she had the time to wake up would be easiest.

Most of the cabins in the area were similarly built – small three roomed affairs (bedroom, bathroom, and a combined kitchen and living area) – and he could tell this would be too. He rounded the corner on the cabin and tugged on the first window he came across.

Locked. Not entirely unexpected.

He made his way to the next window and tried that one too. Also locked.

He had hoped to slip in quietly through one of the windows, but knew that might not be a possibility. At the front door, Jacob pulled the lockpick from his pocket and began to wind and twist the tool in the lock torturously slow, careful of the noise.

When the lock unclicked, the door sprung open and somewhere inside the house something snapped. A boulder – weighing, if he had to guess, fifty to seventy pounds – fell from above and through the hardwood floor. If she wasn’t awake already, she would be by now.

“Fuck,” he growled, his plans shot to shit in an instant.

The door was a dead zone now – between the boulder sized crater in the threshold on the floor and god knows what else lurking on the other side of the crater – he quickly switched the safety off on his handgun and shot through the window, shattering the glass. If he could get in and find her before she had the chance to spring out of bed, his plans would be salvaged.

And anyway, she couldn’t have rigged the windows too, right?

 _Wrong_.

He jumped through the window, took a step into the dark guts of the house and his foot found something wheeled. For the first time in his entire life he felt absolutely weightless, falling backwards, arms waving frantically, like an idiot. His back connected with the window’s wood casing just as all the lights in the cabin were thrown on.

The Deputy stood bent over the kitchen island with a shotgun trained on his chest. She instructed him to drop his weapons and kick them to her. Jacob did as he was told. Her eyes widened when they adjusted to the light and she recognized the intruder.

“Christ, never thought I’d see the day, big guy,” a smile tugged at her lips, “Must have really made you mad with my radio call, huh?”

His jaw involuntarily clenched. “It didn’t exactly  _thrill me_ , princess.”

“If I’m being honest,” she grinned, sweetly, depositing the shotgun on the countertop and picking up a handgun, “I didn’t expect that it would.”

She straightened up and walked around the counter, with one arm extended towards him, pointing the gun straight at his head. She tossed him a set of handcuffs and gestured to the radiator beside him.

“Do me a favor, Jacob. Make yourself at home.”

He caught the cuffs in mid-air, but was thoroughly rooted to the spot when he laid eyes on her outfit: a short white t-shirt and red lace panties. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen a half-naked woman before, but it had been longer than he would have liked and he was lost in thoughts of her that he’d rather ignore. Jacob swallowed, his throat contracting and catching like sandpaper on wood.

She scoffed at his unabashed leering. “Yeah, apologies. Didn’t really have time to throw on clothes when I heard the front door being jimmied open.”

Hearing the annoyance in her voice switched him from stupefied to indignant.  _She was annoyed_? She had destroyed half his goddamned region in a week’s time!  

Jacob was slowly working his way up to furious when he remembered why he had come to her house in the first place. His pride had gotten the better of him, he knew, but he couldn’t have let her insolence slide. Weak. And now he was in this mess.  

He wanted to rip the fucking radiator off the wall and throw it at her. He could probably do it in three to four pulls too, but she’d shoot him dead before he got the chance to fling it at her. Instead he eased himself to the floor near the radiator, and cuffed himself. Once complete, he tugged at the restraints to demonstrate to her that he had done as she asked.

She smiled warmly and turned on her heel, wordlessly padding into the bedroom, her hips swaying hypnotically. He wasn’t sure if that was for his benefit and he’d think about that later. First he had to get loose. He watched her disappear in the bedroom and while she was away, he began to slowly unscrew the metal radiator pipe from the floor with his pointer finger and thumb. He struggled at first to get a good enough grip, but it slowly began to wind away.

She was quick though, and before he could break free, she emerged from her bedroom, fully dressed with her backpack and sniper rifle slung over her back.

“Alright, so –” she pointed at the kitchen island with a wrench. “I’ll leave the keys to the cuffs on the counter, and I’ll leave you this –” she waved the wrench, “to free yourself.”

The Deputy squatted in front of him and plunked the wrench on the floor, her hand perched over it. Jacob was so close to her now. He stole a glance at her lips. She grinned, reveling at the obviousness of his lust.

And not for the first time this week, Jacob seethed at how she toyed with him, at how she affected him.  _Because_ , he mused,  _that’s what really bothered him about her insolence, wasn’t it?_

“You’re in so much trouble, Deputy. You know that right?”

Her eyes sparkled at the threat. “Jacob, I knew I was in trouble the minute I radioed you, but I did it anyway.”

Now Jacob’s interest was piqued. “And why’s that, princess?”

“You  _really_  want to know?” She was close enough that he could see her pupils had all but engulfed the brown of her eyes.  

“I’m askin’, ain’t I?” He chuckled, his anger melting away. She was enjoying this too.

“Well, then, if you really want to know,” she slid the wrench to him and stood, “you’re going to have to catch me first to find out.”

And just like that she was leaping over the crater in the floor and out the front door, down the steps, and through the woods.


	3. Something Like Need

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had toyed with writing another chapter of this since August 2018, but didn't think I could write the smut I thought the chapter required. Turns out, I really can't write smut, but I came up with this chapter instead and I'm really happy with it. Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> (PS - there is a little bit of sex talk though, so if you're not into that, please skip this chapter.)

Maya was running as fast as her legs would take her through the woods near her house, weaving in and out of the trees and tearing glances over her shoulder to see if she could spot him. So far, she was in the clear. If Jacob had freed himself already, he hadn’t caught up with her yet, and she was pretty sure that he wouldn’t if he was on foot. In high school Maya had won state championships for long-distance running and Jacob was pushing 50 years of age. The odds were against him. 

Just the same, she’d be an idiot to discount him, so she tore one more glance behind her. _Nothing_.

She wasn’t sure what had gotten into her back at her cabin but there had been hints since she had woken up in Devil’s Drop that she was different than before - her sudden jolts awake at night, covered in sweat; her irritation at sounds as inconsequential as clocks ticking, three rooms away; her incessant thoughts that maybe she _should_ go back to Jacob at St. Francis’…

She was changed.

Jacob had molded her anger towards him into something else entirely. Something like _need_. She _needed_ his attention, she craved it, and when she didn’t have it, well, heaven help the Whitetail Mountains. Every wolf beacon destroyed and every outpost liberated was one more mark against her with Jacob, but she didn’t care about that. She knew he’d come for her eventually and that’s all she really wanted anyway. That her radio call had been the last straw with him was all the more thrilling.

Maya ran for about 2000 meters more before she reached the main road and found an old abandoned car with SINNER written in white paint on the hood. _How appropriate_ , she mused, as she removed the plastic steering column cover, found the starter bundle she needed, and scrunched down in the driver’s seat.

It had been amazing at how quickly she had learned to hotwire a car. The skill had passed down through the Boshaw clan like a family trade, and Sharky had imparted the wisdom onto Maya one afternoon about a month ago, over beers. Maya had tried to impress upon him the illegality of hotwiring a car, but he had dismissed her with a grin and a wave of his hand. “Like my old man used to say, ‘If you don’t get caught, it ain’t illegal.’”

She was brought back to the here and now when the engine caught and turned over and she squealed in delight. She reminded herself that she should stop by Boshaw Manor soon to thank her favorite deviant.

But first, the Wolf’s Den.

 

* * *

 

 

Maya tells Eli, or any of the Whitetails for that matter, nothing about her encounter with Jacob. She should feel guilty, she knows, this being one more mark against her, but all she really feels is indifference. What’s to know? She got away from Jacob without being forced into another trial. So what if she had kinda, sorta flirted with him a little first? Big deal.

As she’s driving to the Visitor Center for Eli, she thinks long and hard about heading for the _Veteran’s_ Center instead.

_No_ , she tells herself. _You’re on a mission to save people from a cult, not fucking join it_.

She parks SINNER about a mile from the Visitor Center and hoofs it until she’s hidden just across the road, behind a giant boulder. Every now and again she leans out to take a look at the cult patrolling the area.

She makes note of everyone she sees: One man holding a gun on a Whitetail hostage on his knees in the lower level parking lot; another guard patrolling the steps nearby them going back and forth, up and down, on an endless loop; another man walking the front veranda on the left side of the lower Visitor Center building; and another man who makes his way in and out of the lower Visitor Center building. Maya knows there’s four hostages, but she only sees the one in the parking lot.

Not wanting to risk the hostages’ lives, she heads through a nearby sewer tunnel that runs under the road and up by the Center’s steps. The tunnel is thankfully long since dry and no Peggie’s are patrolling it. She switches her rifle for a bow and arrow from a dead Whitetail laying at the mouth of the tunnel closest to the Center. This guy must have tried to save his friends and failed. Maya said a silent prayer that she wouldn’t end up like him, face down in the dirt, dead.

When she was a kid her father would send her from the city of Chicago – where she grew up – during the summers to a kid’s camp near Fall’s End, where she practiced archery incessantly for a couple of weeks on end every year. She outperformed everyone, including the instructor. When she shared the news to her parents about how good she was, they enrolled her in an archery club in downtown Chicago, of all places.

She hoped her proficiency with a bow would help her now.

When the man patrolling the steps reaches the parking lot, she lets loose an arrow and hits him clean through the eye. She stays knelt behind a flatbed of cult supplies, waiting to see if they heard him fall to the ground. No one rushes to his aid, so she’s in the clear.

The whole thing goes far faster than she anticipates; she’s good with a bow, yes, but she’s also gotten used to clearing an area of Peggies quickly, lest they have time to call on others before she kills them. After the man patrolling the steps is killed, she creeps around the flat bed and shoots the man in the parking lot through the throat. The hostage tries to stand, but she urges him down on his knees again. She needs him quiet and discreet if she’s going to pull this off. She needs him to stay out of her way.

She heads up the grass embankment to the veranda and waits behind the rock wall for the patrolling guard to pass her by. When she hears him pass by, whistling _Set Those Sinners Free_ , she hops over the railing quietly and sticks a knife in his neck.

The trickiest part she thinks will be getting into the buildings without being detected by the guards inside, so she carefully edges the door to the lower building open slowly. When the guard comes into view, she throws the knife into his eye and drops him dead without a second thought.

The Whitetail hostage tells her to follow the steps to the upper building, where two guards and two hostages remain. One set is in the building – Maya can see them through the large plate glass windows – and the other set is out in front.

She swings around the upper building undetected and goes in and takes out that guard first with a throwing knife. With the last guard, she stands, aims her arrow straight at the glass and shoots. It pierces the glass, creating a hole far larger than the arrow that went through it, and spears him right through the eye as well. _How satisfying_ , she thinks, smiling as the glass shatters to the ground.   

Then comes the news via radio that there are more hostages nearby at Hawkeye Tunnel _and could you please save them too?_ There’s always one more mission to do, always a few more people to save. Maya sighs and radios him back.

“I’ll get them, Eli.”

She hasn’t been back to or near the Hawkeye Tunnel and the Devil’s Drop ravine below it since her last trial and she doesn’t really want to go there now. But she has to, doesn’t she? To save the Whitetails, _again_?

She rides a confiscated quad up the mountain and parks nearby the tunnel. Here too she thinks the best course of action will be stealth, so she sticks to the side of the road, creeping through the scrub brush and scraggly bushes until she sees the mouth of the tunnel in the distance.

She raises her rifle from where she’s crouched, and takes two shots into the tunnel; the man with the rocket launcher goes down first, and then the man standing beside the mounted gun. Two Peggies come to check on their companions and get a bullet to the face for their troubles too.

Maya slowly loads her rifle again and keeps a lookout for any movement, but sees none. She approaches slowly until she’s absolutely certain no Peggies are smart enough to be hiding inside, waiting to ambush her, and then finds the remaining Whitetails, caged and alive, on the alcove that overlooks the Devil’s Drop ravine.

She radios Eli and assures him these Whitetails are safe too.

The rest of her day goes much the same as she flits through each herald’s region, picking off Peggies, rescuing people, and blowing up cult property. John radios her once to complain about what she’s done in Holland Valley and she sees a hallucination of Faith near one of her shrines in the Henbane, but she doesn’t see nor hear from the one Seed she had hoped would find her.  

 

* * *

 

Much later, after night arrives and Maya makes her way back to the Elk Jaw Lodge, she shuffles up to bed in the former radio room. It’s still got the radio, but she had converted it into her own personal space this afternoon. She had instructed the Resistance members hanging out at the lodge to help her move the three bunk beds out and down the stairs. With all of those medical tables moved out of the main area of the building, they had plenty of room to keep the bunks there instead. And once the bunks were moved, she had a full-sized bed and a couple of televisions brought in that connected to the surveillance cameras around the area.

By 10:30, Maya was sprawled across the mattress on her stomach, chin in her palm, flipping through issues of _Invent & Survive_ that she had read millions of times. She wasn’t actually reading the magazines this time though – couldn’t have focused on them if she had even tried – but used them to pass the time. It was the survivalist’s version of _he-loves-me_ , _he-loves-me-not_ , except every page turn was _he’s-gonna-kill-me_ and then alternatively, _but-maybe-not…?_

Maya still hadn’t heard from Jacob. This wasn’t particularly unusual of course, but after his arrival at her cabin earlier in the day, she had expected _something_. She should have been relieved by the silence. She wasn’t. Instead, she dug out a fruit snack packet from her backpack and ate it, miserably. And then another packet. And then another packet after that.

She didn’t notice each of the televisions going dark until they were all out. Her veins turned to ice and she slipped off the bed and grabbed her handgun from her bag. Slowly, she tip-toed to her door and squeezed through the crack, careful not to brush against it. She heard someone on the stairs, lifted her gun, and then waited for them to round the corner.

When she saw Jacob she hissed, “Did you kill the Resistance members outside?”

He lifted his hands as if surrendering and Maya mistook the gesture for a confession. She unclicked the safety and moved her finger to the trigger.

“Deputy, relax. They are still alive. I dosed them with Bliss so they wouldn’t shoot at me. Take a look.” He gestured to the window on her right.

Maya narrowed her eyes at him and threatened. “If you so much as move a muscle while I check, I’ll shoot that haircut clean off you, you understand?”

He nodded.

Sure enough the two Resistance members were alive just as Jacob said they would be, laughing in a swirl of green haze, two oblivious idiots.

When she turned back to Jacob, he remained on the landing, waiting for her to speak. His eyes were trained on hers, burning into her something fierce, and she stayed where she was at the top of the stairs.

Her voice came out in a whisper. “You found me.” ( _Weak_ , she thought instantly, chastising herself. In her head the voice sounded an awful lot like Jacob Seed.)

“Deputy,” Jacob intoned, his voice clear and deep, “You left a trail of destruction through three regions for me to follow.”

Maya lifted her chin and looked down her nose at him. Who did he think he was to keep her waiting? “Well, now that you’re here, what are you going to do about it?”

“I ought to haul your ass back to the Center for more conditioning. Or _worse_.” He paused on the landing to kneel and began unlacing his boots, “But tonight I’ve got other things in mind.”

Maya shivered with anticipation, having a feeling she knew what the _other things_ would be. Shamelessly, she prodded for more details, “Oh? Like what?” She knew the what, but she wanted to hear him say it.

Jacob stopped his ministrations and looked directly at her, with his eyebrows raised. He nodded her way. “Fucking you until you know you’re mine, for one.”

Maya’s breath caught in her throat at Jacob’s admission and an ache hit her low in the stomach. She had been waiting all day for this. _For him_.

Jacob stood and put one foot on the stair above the landing, testing the waters. When she dropped her arm to her side, he took one more cautious step. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Deputy?”

She felt herself nodding before she realized what she was doing. She was in a trance now, only aware of Jacob and Jacob alone. The way he gazed up at her and slowly ascended the stairs made her think he was feeling the same for her, too.

“But if we do this, nothing changes. You and me, we’re still enemies, Deputy.”

 “Fine,” she conceded, her heart skipping a beat, “Didn’t expect anything to change between us, anyway.” 

“No?” He asked teasingly, “You weren’t expecting special privileges?”

Maya had noticed Jacob wasn’t wearing his normal camo jacket and he didn’t have the bunker key hanging from his neck either. _Precautions_ , she figured. She couldn’t take the music box from his jacket pocket or the key if he didn’t have it on his person. And Maya noticed something else about Jacob too. He had showered, his clothes were clean, he smelled _good._

_If we do this?_ she thought smugly. _Like you ever had any other intention but doing this._

“Would I have gotten them?” When Jacob reached the second to last step and was within reach, Maya ran her hands across up his broad chest and around his shoulders. Her mouth was inches from his own, her chest against his. “The privileges, I mean.”

 “No,” he admitted, wrapping his arms around her waist and tugging her even closer. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat; she could tell he wasn’t entirely unaffected either.

When he made to advance up the last step she stopped him with a hand to his chest, holding him back, while she clutched his neck with the other hand still. “I have my own condition too, Jacob.”

He quirked an eyebrow, curious. “Oh? Well, let’s hear it.”

“We go our separate ways after this. You can’t just haul me back to the Center.”

This was a formality of course. If Jacob had wanted to grab her and take her back to the Center, there was little she could do about it; the man was nearly a foot taller, more than fifty pounds heavier, and impossibly strong. She was at the mercy of Jacob Seed and whatever he decided.

He seemed to consider her condition for a moment, but just what he thought about it was thoroughly unreadable. Could he live with the terms? Was he going to just kidnap her now and forgo the sex altogether? Or worse, have sex with her and then go back on his word? He was only quiet for seconds, but it felt like an eternity. 

“That seems like a reasonable request,” he concedes carefully, his voice hoarse, but then amends it with, “But no promises tomorrow if you piss me off again.”

They survey each other for a moment longer, looking for a lie on their faces. When Maya is satisfied, she leans back in his grip and takes a step back to give him room to climb the final step.  She’s not scared exactly, but she is anxious. And not anxious about what she’s about to do or even about him in _this_ moment, but instead about later. They can lie to each other about this not changing a thing, but neither of them is stupid; the fact that they even got to this bargaining meant that their relationship had already changed.

 

* * *

 

After Jacob has left and she’s laying in bed watching the sun rise alone, she thinks about radioing him, and she even pushes in the talk button once before she thinks better of it. He’s only been gone for about six hours, and she turns over what he told her in her mind about a dozen times. _If we do this, nothing changes_. But how come he had seemed reticent to leave her and kissed her like _that_ before he went? How could a man that hesitated at the door actually want to leave?

He had kept his promise to go their separate ways, but she needed to know if he meant it when he said nothing would change.

She couldn’t very well send him a message over his channel for all of Hope County to hear asking the leader of the local rogue militia to define his relationship with the leader of the Resistance. So instead she sat up, flipped to his channel, and began tapping on her side table next to the bed.

**C-O-M-E-B-A-C-K-T-O-M-E**

She wasn’t certain Jacob even knew Morse code, but it seemed likely given his military background. One second without a response turned into ten seconds and then a full minute. She loosened her grip on the radio, her heart dropping. So that’s that. _Nothing changes_.

She stood and crossed her room for the bathroom, mad that she had played herself, mad that she had heard what he had said but had not really listened. “You’re a fool,” she whispered to herself as she squeezed a dollop of toothpaste out on her toothbrush and then began to brush. She was 37 years old – she should know better by now that sex was just sex. Each swipe across her teeth with the toothbrush was punctuated by a steady, _Nothing changes_ , over and over again in her mind.

And then she hears it while she’s hunched over the sink spitting – the radio crackles to life – and she freezes, her hand perched over the faucet.

He’s breathing on the other end before he speaks, like he’s walking through the Center’s yard to get to a quieter place and hesitating on the other end. But he doesn’t disappoint.

“On my way,” Jacob responds, before the line goes dead.


End file.
